Open Source

Frederic Muller

Running a management consulting firm for a living in China, Frederic is deeply involved in the open source scene. <br>From the local Beijing Linux User Group to the worldwide promotion of software freedom, he currently focuses on reducing the digital divide in poor Chinese schools by building open educational content based on open source software only. <br>Collaborating with the Chinese government on various projects to promote OSS, Frederic has a unique perspective on what is happening now, and what to expect from this challenging environment.

First of all, I want to thank my predecessor Michael Iannini for passing the baton and offering the opportunity for me to take this blog space. Like Michael, I am a member of the Beijing Linux User Group (BLUG), which is probably the most interesting Linux User Groups in the world, as you can imagine.

The question of the enforceability of the GPL came into question during a presentation by Taiwen Jiang, the XOOPS maintainer. XOOPS is basically a home grown China, well actually Asian, open source system.

At last week's 2007 Software Innovation Summit, Christophe Bisciglia from Google introduced to the attendees Google 101. Google has just recently developed this curriculum which Google staff, namely Christophe, if my understanding is correct, has been working with University of Washington to deliver these courses.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007, was the date of the 2007 Software Innovation Summit – Open Source Software and Trends in Internationalization. The summit was intended to be an annual event, but I am not sure if the event organizers, in particular its Western benefactors, were so inclined to commit to that.

When I look at companies like Red Flag, Turbo Linux, Co-Create and SunWah, I see token open source development houses that are more focused on service and integration. Now, these companies can be great for the community in localizing open source applications and standardizing them for government and financial industry projects, as well as contributing patches back to the community (I can't confirm this), but I don't see these companies very active in the Western community.

Just when I was beginning to feel upbeat about all the events and innovations going on in China this year, I see this thread from the CentOS List. The thread is not new, nor is the 'offer' being made in it.

The Finish group Open Tuesday came to Beijing last Tuesday, January 30th to expand its communication network about the wonderful world of Open Source. If you go to their site, the main page states “There is a lot of talk, and exploration globally into Open Source, … in both public and private sector, but real action is only now starting to take off.

China's legacy communities are LinuxSir, China Java World, and Huihoo.They have historically culled a group of enthusiasts that generally like to troll for interesting issues to solve in their spare time, but not much "communal" spirit was extended beyond that.